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DOTCOM saga - updates
Renegade:
Leave no good deed unpunished - Where was that Don't Talk to the Police video again? I think we need a link to it here.
-Stoic Joker (November 22, 2012, 08:51 AM)
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Just some more information about that video:
James Duane, law professor at Regent University
George Brunch, Virginia Beach Police Department
James Duane
http://www.regent.edu/acad/schlaw/faculty_staff/duane.cfm
His full profile:
http://www.regent.edu/acad/schlaw/faculty_staff/duanecv.cfm
The first mention on the page of that video:
"In Praise of the Fifth Amendment: Why No Criminal Suspect Should Ever Talk to the Police. Presentation at Yale University. New Haven, Connecticut. December 11, 2008."
The video is below as well.
You can also find it here on the university law blog:
http://regentlawfaculty.blogspot.com.au/2009/05/professor-james-duane.html
IainB:
@40hz: Thanks for those video links. I had seen and downloaded the first video some time ago, via a DCF link in another discussion thread, but I had not seen the 2nd vid.
Amazing that you actually do seem to need educational/self-defence videos like this, to maintain your constitutional rights, in a supposedly "free" country and where the aggressors in this case are apparently the police.
Renegade:
On a more practical note, this 45 minute video is pretty much the single best video I've ever seen on how to deal with the police in their official capacity. Most of this won't be too helpful if it turns out you actually did violate the law. But it will go a long way to protecting you if you haven't.
And as any attorney will tell you, it's not necessary that you actually break the law to get arrested - or even worse, be convicted for doing so.
:tellme:
-40hz (November 22, 2012, 10:46 AM)
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Just finished watching that. Thanks for posting it! :Thmbsup:
IainB:
This isn't an update, but an interesting and thought-provoking post from reason.com:
(Copied below sans embeddd hyperlinks/images, with my emphasis.)
Did the Feds Set-Up MegaUpload?
J.D. Tuccille|Nov. 26, 2012 8:11 pm
The long-running MegaUpload saga has become known for the Keystone-Kops shenanigans of New Zealand authorities who secured the wrong legal documents and broke laws against domestic spying in executing the will of their high-handed American masters — understandable, since incompetence and snoopiness are easier to grasp than the intricacies of intellectual property law. But the copyright claims that killed the once-huge company and set in motion events that may well determine how Kiwis cast their votes next election are still in play. And it emerged recently that some of the files that MegaUpload is accused of storing in violation of copyright law were actually retained at the request of the United States government.
According to Wired:
Eighteen months before Megaupload’s operators were indicted in the United States, the company complied with a secret U.S. search warrant targeting five of its users, who were running their own file-sharing service using Megaupload’s infrastructure, according to interviews and newly unsealed court documents.
The June 24, 2010 warrant to search the Megaupload servers in Virginia was part of a U.S. criminal investigation into NinjaVideo, which was piggy-backing on Megaupload’s “Megavideo” streaming service. Though the feds had already begun quietly investigating Megaupload months before, in this case the government treated Megaupload as NinjaVideo’s internet service provider, serving Megaupload with the warrant and asking them to keep it quiet.
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What did MegaUpload get for its troubles?
Despite Megaupload’s cooperation, the 39 infringing NinjaVideo files were later used against the popular file-sharing service as evidence to seize Megaupload.com domains and prosecute Dotcom and others connected to the site.
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The apparent entrapment may not be so straightforward, since the forbidden files were also found elsewhere on MegaUpload's servers. Theoretically, then, the U.S. Department of Justice could be going after MegaUpload for those other copies, rather than the ones it asked the company to retain.
But ...
In the past year, we've had internationally coordinated armed raids, as well as a full-court press by the United States government, all over a friggin' copyright case against a company that has a history of cooperating with American authorities. Yes, there is, potentially, a lot of money in digital music and movie files, but this all seems oddly disprportionate to the core concerns in the case. Especially when it turns out that MegaUpload had previously worked with the feds, and the U.S. is complaining about files it asked the company to retain.
Far be it from me to suggest—
Oh, screw it. No, it isn't. The fact is, it increasingly looks like the United States government rented out the Department of Justice as a hit squad to the entertainment industry to enforce a contract on MegaUpload.
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40hz:
No surprises there. They did the same favor for the railroads before that. :-\
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